Minutes from the January 10, 2007 Stormwater Committee Meeting

Potential Partnership with Blair High School and the Master Gardeners

Charlie Garlow, chair of the PTSA Beatification Committee, spoke to us about the landscaping opportunities at Blair High School. A master plan for the school landscaping is being developed in conjunction with the Master Gardeners. The Woodmoor Garden Club (Linda Rogers) is also interested in participating. Teachers and students would be involved. Charlie was familiar
with our work at Eastern Middle School and wanted to know if we would be interested in participating. Ed noted that if the landscaping used included environmental functions and if outreach to the school (particularly the Horticulture Program) was possible, we might be very interested. We would be interested in helping install rain gardens and working these
landscape features into the curriculum. We would also like to arrange for our members from time to time to do presentations to the students. Many ideas were discussed including having a charrette with the Horticulture students, doing science experiments and monitoring the soils (before and after the project.) Some of the committee members indicated interest in being a guest speaker to the students. Jenny and Ed will attend a preliminary meeting at Blair High School on January 17 at 3:15 p.m. Ed wants to find out if there are any FOSC members involved at Blair. The committee agreed this was is a good opportunity to reach out and work with tudents, Blair’s environmental club, teachers and gardening groups.

Activities at Northwood High School

Jill Coutts, science teacher and head of the Environmental Academy at Northwood, has worked with our committee now for about 3 years. She is a finalist in the CBT Teacher of the Year. Some of us are planning on attending the CBT Awards program with Jill on January 16 in Annapolis.

Discussing the Northwood student project, we noted that we need to spend about 10
minutes at the beginning of each session to discuss what we are doing and why. Toward the
end of the project, we need to spend some time “reflecting” what was learned. This is supposed to occur in all the student service projects. Alison will try to find a press release about the project so we can get some publicity out of it for Jill.

Diane provided a brief update on the Builders Meeting she was invited to attend on January 9. She thought it went well. Diane spoke about the new Small Lot Drainage Law. The builders will need help in implementing rain gardens. They are just learning about the concept. Diane noted that we should look into developing courses for the industry funded through grants.

Grants

Sally updated us briefly on getting grants. If the stormwater committee is going to go beyond its current levels of effort, we are going to need focused professional help. There is a need for more outreach and coordinating complicated initiatives. The effort is beyond what volunteers can provide. Sally noted the www.grants.gov is a good source of information. She also told us that cooperative agreements are a good model for FOSC. One option is having a paid staff person who is self funded through grants. Sally noted that we need to start collecting information about what grants are available and what are their deadlines. Perhaps Jim Baird is a good source of information on grants. Sally is going to take a stab at starting gathering the information.

Bio-Retention System in Kensington

Diane gave a brief update on Ed’s and her efforts in the Town of Kensington in getting an innovative bio-retention system in a new MARC parking lot/pedestrian walkway. Again, grants may be needed to supplement the cost difference between the standard pipe and pond solution and the more environmentally preferable LID solution. The LID concept has been well received by the town. We will follow this effort since it might be a useful solution to runoff from our
parking lots.

Outreach to the Chevy Chase Garden Club

Outreach to garden clubs is one of our objectives. Jenny updated us briefly on her presentation to the Chevy Chase Garden Club. The presentation went well. Jenny and Lauren Wheeler will be doing more presentations to other landscape/garden organizations including the National Federation of Garden Clubs.

The Green Streets Bill

Diane updated us on the Green Streets Bill. On January 23, (Tuesday) at 7:30 p.m. there will be a Council hearing on this bill. Diane will testify, but it would help if others also testified. Beth will review the 118 page bill for us. Beth also noted an interesting Green Streets book she uses at work and recommends it to us. See http://www.metro-region.org/article.cfm?articleid=262
There will be a meeting with Ms. Floreen’s staff on January 18 at 8 a.m. Beth will try to attend.

Stormwater Tour

This spring we are working to kick off our stormwater tour effort. Alison is arranging the first
group. She will also review a draft of the tour book that Ed prepared.

Outreach Committee Survey

The meeting closed with the committee discussing the Outreach Committee survey. Marshall and Alison explained the purpose. The results of the discussion are shown below.

Attendees:
Ed Murtagh
Marshall Johnson
Diane Cameron
Jenny Reed
Beth Chaisson
Alessandra Sagasti
Alison Gillespie
Daphne Pee
Sally Benjamin
Charlie Garlow (guest)

Outreach Survey to Committees

Questions for Committees

1. What are your objectives for the coming year? What activities do you know you are doing? What activities are you thinking of doing? What activities do you dream about doing?
Please include concrete numbers where possible, such as number of volunteer projects
you’d like your committee to accomplish, number of walks conducted, etc.

The Stormwater Committee will continue with its efforts in outreach, advocacy and implementing showcase LID projects. We would like to significantly increase outreach efforts to complement the County’s Clean Water Initiatives.

Activities we know we are doing:

–Continuing to develop of partnership with Northwood High School (outreach and LID showcases.)

–Developing a stormwater tour for the watershed. Do a pilot tour this spring.

–Maintenance efforts on the rain gardens at Eastern Middle School.

Activities we are thinking of doing:

–Implementing a partnership agreement with Blair High School (LID projects and outreach).
–Continuing our partnership with the City of Takoma Park. Installing a showcase LID project at Spring Park in the City of Takoma Park.

–Installing showcase rain gardens at homes.

–Increasing public speaking at homeowner associations, civic groups, schools, garden/landscaping organizations, and builder organizations.

–Working on getting grant money for professional support for our committee’s efforts.

What activities to do dream about doing?

–Nice newsletter on stormwater related issues. The newsletter would be tied to our outreach and advocacy efforts. This could work well as an inter-watershed group effort.
— Helping set up teams of students (from Horticulture Programs at Blair and Northwood) who will design, install and maintain rain gardens in our watershed. This could be a good summer job opportunity. This would need to be coordinated with the Clean Water Initiative funding.

2. How many volunteer hours do you think are needed for these activities? Please be specific about what level of expertise you would like volunteers to possess.

–Unlimited. Very large number. The committee is looking into getting professional support to implement and coordinating our many activities.

3. What tools will you need to reach your goals? (This can include tools such as technical, database management, particular subject expertise, etc.)

–Training in bio-retention design (Train the Trainer type).

–Updates to the website. Use Landscape Architect to provide educational diagrams for LID installations.

–Print out Tour book.

–Stormwater Newsletter (some paper copies).

–Weed wench.

4. What educational message do you want people to take home to their own backyard?
Stepping away from specific activities now: Think of this question as if you were given an opportunity to explain to every citizen in the watershed, in 1 minute, why the work your committee does is important and what you want them to know about it.

–Homeowners can help their local environment (Sligo Creek, wildlife, air quality, heat island effect) by using environmentally beneficial landscaping practices in their backyard. I would hope that this short message would lead them to learn more about trees, rain gardens and green roofs.

5. Who do you think your target audiences will be for the coming year? Are you trying to reach: Friends members? Park users? Citizens in the watershed? Your message to each group might be different.

–Teachers and students

–Civic associations and groups

–Garden Clubs

–Landscaping professionals

–Builders